


Hope's Gamble

by ChipAndDealer



Category: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Dismantling the Motives, Friendship, Gen, Leon and Touko are a surprise to everyone, Monokuma (Dangan Ronpa) Being An Asshole, Monokuma's very frustrated by the lack of murder, Spoilers for DR 1, The first floor ain't exactly the entertainment center of the school, Time Loop, Time Travel, Tired Naegi Makoto, but they make do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27670706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChipAndDealer/pseuds/ChipAndDealer
Summary: They hadn't known each other long, a few days maybe. But Monokuma had clearly grown annoyed by the lack of murders, and this next temptation made his displeasure known: the darkest secrets each student had, all to be revealed if no murder was committed.Naegi laughed.
Relationships: Naegi Makoto & Everyone
Comments: 11
Kudos: 247





	Hope's Gamble

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't reference Faulerro's Danganronpa Abridged Thing for time reasons, but it was a near thing.
> 
> Please enjoy my tired boi.

It was a thought all of the Ultimate students had, in some form or other, when Makoto Naegi finally walked into the gymnasium at a little past eight.

Why did he look so tired?

Many of them were accustomed to long nights. While their prodigious natures kept them in good stead with their specialties, pulling an all-nighter before a test, going out with friends, or staying up late binging television or writing into the early hours of the next morning, all of them experienced something like it. But this, the exhaustion that seemed to afflict the young boy, was something else entirely.

Each of the students introduced themselves to him in turn, but like Kirigiri, he rudely refused to say his Ultimate skill. Instead, his gaze seemed fixed straight forward, at a podium beside one wall.

When Monokuma rose up from behind it and began explaining the graduation clause, he didn't say a word, and when Monokuma disappeared again, the 'Entrance Ceremony' concluded, he walked out the door while the others talked among themselves. With the way he was acting, nearly everyone decided he was after the strange Graduation Clause; he would try to kill them.

Then the first temptation came.

He was already in the A/V room when Monokuma's announcement told them to go there, and slowly each student filed in to see what could only be Naegi's family on the big screen, wishing him well, then vanishing in a flood of chaos.

Naegi watched it, apparently numb to its contents, then he swapped it out for the next disc. Maizono's pop group, vibrant and full of life, then suddenly on the ground. Dead or alive, it was impossible to tell. Kuwata and Asahina were comforting the crying Sayaka, when Naegi swapped the discs again. It wasn't long before every video was watched beginning to end, each one ending with Monokuma's bait: 'find out after graduation'.

Naegi ejected the last disc, and a room full of ashen-faced teens turned to him when he finally spoke again. "Oogami." Despite her massive size, she gave a slight start at being suddenly addressed. "What did you think of your video?"

"What I saw does not upset me," she answered carefully. "The way of my family is to accept your death if you are overpowered. Still, to lose so easily..."

"It doesn't make sense, does it?" Naegi finished for her. His gaze shifted over to Byakuya. "Togami. How's the security around your family's estate?"

"Impeccable," he answered, the scowl on his face becoming slightly less pronounced at the question. The Togami family would accept nothing less."

His attention changed again. "Maizono?"

"Hey, leave her alone," Kuwata shouted back. "What's the point of all this anyway?"

"Unbeatable warriors," Naegi began counting off on his fingers. "'Impeccable' security, and I'm no expert, but I'm guessing one of the fastest up and coming pop star bands has a little more than one or two managers making sure the members don't get harassed. Maizono, your group has security too, doesn't it?"

She gave a shaky nod in response.

"For some of us, our families, friends, the people we care about, they're a bit more exposed. But taking out an entire pop band in one fell swoop? Attacking the Togami's, with the best security money can buy? Beating the unstoppable Oogamis?" He shook his head, a thin smile cracking his lips. "Monokuma tried pushing his luck a little too far." He looked up at one of the cameras. "I wouldn't be surprised if the mastermind behind all this was the Ultimate photoshop artist, or something like that."

No one noticed 'Junko' stiffen at the back of the crowd.

"And besides," Naegi continued. "Even if this was real, by some complete miracle, do you really think one of us would sacrifice every other family at stake here, just on the chance that our own were okay? What kind of people do you think we are?"

In between Hagakure's saying, "see? Told you it had to be fake," and Maizono steadily getting a grip on herself again, Naegi slipped out of the room.

Kirigiri caught him in the hall. "I must say, if all of that was just to throw people off the trail when you kill someone, I'll be greatly disappointed."

He paused at the vending machine, taking out a canned coffee. "There'd have to be easier ways of doing that, don't you think? Besides, I get the feeling no matter what trick I used, you'd see through it." He took a sip of the coffee, then grimaced. "Never get used to that," he muttered.

"Not going to sleep yet?" Kirigiri quirked her head, surveying him. "Seems you've earned it."

Naegi smiled, a cracked and broken thing. "No," he answered, quietly. "Not yet."

They got through the night without anyone killing each other.

In the morning, Ludenberg and Asahina began figuring out games to play, using laundry, silverware, chairs, whatever they had on hand, to pass the time. Fukawa and Yamada told stories at night, original, or retellings of manga and anime no one else had seen, it was impossible to tell. Kuwata and Maizono even started singing songs, mostly pop of some kind, but there were a few requests one or two students would bring up and between the two of them, they had a surprisingly solid range.

They were trapped, and that feeling, sunk into the bottom of their guts as it was, never truly went away. But with every new game, every story, and song, it felt like they could breathe again.

The next temptation came.

They hadn't known each other long, a few days maybe. But Monokuma had clearly grown annoyed by the lack of murders, and this next temptation made his displeasure known: the darkest secrets each student had, all to be revealed if no murder was committed.

Naegi laughed.

The others all looked to him, wondering how he could possibly prove these also as fake, when the students themselves already knew them to be true.

"Wet the bed until fifth grade." He showed off the secret casually. "Is this really the best you've got, mastermind?" The others looked away, ashamedly. His secret was embarrassing, but for many of them, theirs were far worse. Still, Naegi continued. "I can do better than that: what about all those pictures of the other students on my computer, when I was looking up Hope's Peak?" He asked, starting to stir people from dwelling on their own secrets. "That's pretty creepy and divisive, don't you think? What about something mean I did to my sister once? Really stick it to me that I could be a murderer, huh? Show some ingenuity."

He turned around to see the mixed expressions of all the other Ultimates, confusion, embarrassment, fear, and held up his hands. "Here, nobody tell me your secret yet, I want to guess."

A few mouths opened to shut him down, but no one fully stepped forward, so he continued. "Asahina." She winced at being addressed first, but nodded anyway, paper clenched in her fist. "I'm guessing... you owe a lot of money to the mob, right?"

She blinked once, then twice, posture relaxing. "No? You're way off, Naegi."

He snapped his fingers, smile never dropping. "Shoot. Here, let me try someone else." He looked around the room for a few moments. "Kuwata?"

"Yeah? Right here." After such a far off guess with Asahina, everyone had relaxed significantly, barring Kirigiri and a few other exceptions.

Naegi tapped a finger to his chin in mock-thought. "I'm gonna guess... you have a secret alter ego that's a serial killer, right?"

Kuwata laughed, relaxing some more. "Not even close, dude."

Naegi continued guessing. Maizono was secretly a boy, Yamada accidentally killed his brother, Oowada had never been in a relationship, each prediction seeming further from the truth than the last, yet each one striking a fevered cord in a different student.

"All those guesses, and I couldn't get a single one right, huh?" Makoto gave an overdramatic sigh. "Oh well. Would it really matter, though? If all of those were true? If Asahina really did owe money to the mob, if Maizono was secretly a boy, if Kuwata had a split personality, would it make any difference? We have to live with each other either way. Why draw the line here? Why make this the point of no return? Why hate Ishimaru for having a freaky cousin when there are so many other reasons to hate him?" He considered for a moment. "No offense, Ishimaru."

"Your point stands." Ishimaru asserted.

"So let me get this out of the way right now:" Naegi stood up from his chair. "Maizano, you're a boy. I don't care. Yamada, you accidentally killed your brother. I don't care. Asahina, you owe money to the mob. I don't care." And so it went, Naegi addressing each student in turn, along with the ridiculous, or not so ridiculous guess he made for them, and in as disaffected a manner as possible, informed them how little he cared about it.

Afterwards, as was quickly becoming his standard, he walked out

No one revealed their secrets, not yet, but the unbearable air that had surrounded the Ultimate students had cleared, pierced by Naegi's obvious indifference to their faults, even misattributed as they were.

It wasn't Kirigiri that caught him in the hall that time.

"Chihiro Fujisaki is secretly the Ultimate Soldier?" 'Junko' called through gritted teeth.

"If she is, I still don't care," Naegi answered back, easily. "There are a lot of things soldiers are 'supposed' to be. Never ask questions, never disobey an order, never think. But the reality is, war is more complicated than that: missions go south, plans fail, intelligence is bad, and there's no time to never ask questions, to never think. You have to know, right then, or people die."

Her hands clenched into fists.

"I'm no expert on war, but all it takes is a few page turns in a history book to see wars aren't won just by generals passing out ultimatums from tiny black control rooms; they're won by soldiers." He gave a shrug, expression still miserably flat. "Fujisaki doesn't know that, but then, he's not the Ultimate Soldier, is he?"

Junko Enoshima, no, Mukuro Ikusaba, was left in the hall, the Ultimate Soldier, ultimately alone.

No murders, so Monokuma released the secrets.

It was funny, after all the talk about Naegi's guesses, the students had become somewhat attached to them. When it was revealed who the secret really belonged to, it made for some unexpected interactions.

"Wh-wh-what are you doing? P-put me down." Fukawa shouted.

"What? I just wanted to give my split personality sister a hug," Kuwata protested, suiting actions to the words. "I never thought we'd have anything in common."

"We still don't, you b-b-brute." Fukawa managed to wriggle her way out of his grip. "That was just Naegi's r-r-ridiculous guess."

"Couldn't have been that ridiculous," Kuwata countered. "I mean, he got it right, sort of."

Hagakure gasped. "Naegi must be a clairvoyant like me. But my crystal ball mixed up the psychic energies of everyone in the room, agh." He slapped a hand to his forehead. "I'm sorry, Naegi, that would have been a really great prediction."

It was Asahina who decided to come to a particularly bemused looking Naegi's rescue. "Um, that kind of makes it sound like he's a better clairvoyant than you, though, and I'm pretty sure that's not how Ultimates work."

"Oh." Hagakure scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, good point."

Asahina hesitated for a moment, but finally squinted her eyes shut before speaking. "I'm sorry."

Hagakure looked distinctly off balance by the sudden apology. "About what?"

"When Naegi guessed that I was in debt to the mob, at first I was... relieved. He'd guessed wrong, I wouldn't have to reveal my secret. But then I really thought about it, how awful it must be, and..." she trailed off, noticing all the attention she was gathering from the other students. "I'm sorry," she finished, quietly.

Hagakure laid a hand on her shoulder, smiling genially when she looked up at him. "Hey, it's okay. Yeah, it sucks and it's a bit embarrassing and... scary, but I'll get through it. Just like we're gonna get through this."

"Yeah," Asahina agreed, gripping his hand in hers. "Together."

Not everyone bonded quite the same way with their, 'secret siblings' as Kuwata insisted on calling them, but it was difficult not to feel a bit of empathy for the person whose shoes they'd stepped into, even if only for a short time.

Yamada and Oowada would sometimes be seen off to the side, talking about their brothers, as apparently Yamada had one as well, even if he hadn't been killed as Naegi had guessed.

Maizono had confessed to Fujisaki how hard she found it, sometimes, as an idol, to be so girly all the time, to the point she felt like a caricature of herself, and Fujisaki confessed back his own difficulties trying to be the strong, fearless, man he so obviously wasn't. Together, they both agreed to relax a bit, not try quite so hard to be something they weren't.

More unlikely pairs split off, egged on by Naegi's random 'clairvoyance.'

Monokuma seethed.

"You knew this would happen, didn't you?" The black and white bear jumped from monitor to monitor, catching a yawning Naegi in the same hall he always seemed to be caught leaving in.

"You'd have to be more specific. If it's about Leon and Toko, no," he admitted. "That one's thrown me as much as everyone else."

Monokuma was silent for a moment before streamers and trumpets appeared on screen. "Congratulations, Makoto Naegi. You have activated our super secret graduation measure. Please make your way to the second floor stairs and I-"

"No," he answered, flatly.

The streamers stopped. "No?"

"Nah," Naegi yawned again. "Things are just getting interesting. You want me to bail now?"

Monokuma frowned, the action seeming impossible with his jagged smile, yet managed nonetheless. "The memory wipe didn't work on you."

"It worked," Naegi differed. "Anything that happened at school, at the end, all those friendships, memories, gone. No, what I have is much worse."

"I could kill you," Monokuma threatened, bears popping up from behind trashcans and empty classrooms, surrounding Naegi. "You'd stop interfering in the motives then."

"You won't kill me," Naegi shot back. "You like it too much. Everything that I'm doing, it's all completely within the rules, and that fact, the utter helplessness of it all; doesn't that fill you with such despair?"

Monokuma didn't answer, and Naegi didn't wait for him, going to his room and shutting himself inside. He faced the door, so no camera could see his expression, the fear that came from such a brazen gamble. 

Ikusaba, Oogami, maybe just a spear to the back delivered by Monokuma himself, any could kill him, and there wasn't a single thing he could do about it.

He waited, back to the room, as the minutes went by with nothing.

Makoto Naegi was safe, for the moment.

"The next temptation," he muttered to himself. "Money."

Everyone found it strange when, some time after the secrets were revealed, Naegi began offering people money for things. Trying to buy a spare shirt from Kuwata, Yamada's glasses, or one of Ishimaru's buttons, only for each of them to turn him down, ostensibly for just how little money Naegi had. Well, at first.

It wasn't long before Ishimaru insisted that, "the amount of money does not matter. I will not flagrantly disrespect the dress code in such a manner." Despite there not actually being a dress code at Hope's Peak.

"For I as well," Yamada joined in. "These are my only pair of glasses, and the price of not being able to read is too high to pay."

Kuwata shrugged, expression a bit confused. "I mean, yeah, losing a spare shirt isn't all that bad, but the money still doesn't matter, right? Like, we're stuck here, so what would we even spend it on?"

The question hung in the air, the fruit of Naegi's efforts. Despite how much Togami might have liked otherwise, in Hope's Peak, in the highschool of Ultimate despair, money didn't matter.

Monokuma's next temptation was dismantled before it even began.

Naegi didn't remember school. He didn't remember the friendships that he'd built with them all, before the end of the world, away from Monokuma's watchful gaze. But he remembered dying.

He remembered it the first time, starving to death in the apocalyptic wildlands, the second, so confused at waking up in an empty classroom again that Maizono framed him too easily. He remembered more, strange circumstances arranged so perfectly it seemed a different student, a different friend, ended up killing him every time.

He remembered Monokuma, Junko Enoshima, above all, feeding off of his despair as each new loop brought him to endless lows.

But it wasn't enough.

Every time, Naegi would be sent back, every time, able to try something new. So in amongst all the death and betrayal, he couldn't shake the feeling, even facing situations he never had before, that he could tell what was going to happen. The movements people made, the reasons why, it all became predictable, like counting cards to tell which would come next.

Slowly, as he reset time and time again, a plan formed.

It was a ridiculous gamble, trying to save everyone. From the ever innocent Asahina, to the masterminding Ultimate Despair, Junko, herself, he would save them all. His chances of success were dismally low, but there was something Celeste had said about gambling, some vaguely remembered loop long ago that had stuck with him: the first rule of gambling was to never bet something you weren't prepared to lose. She had lied about so many things, but somehow he didn't think that was one of them.

That was okay, then. He was only betting his life. That was something he was prepared to lose as many times as it took.

He didn't know who would follow him when he slipped out into the hall, the stack of useless money Monokuma had tried to use as a temptation disregarded behind him, but he knew someone would. It was predictable.

"Naegi?" It was Asahina's voice?

Makoto furrowed his brow. She shouldn't have had any reason to confront him about the money, so why? "Yeah?"

"People notice, you know?" She said, looking away, uncertainly. "When you leave, you act like no one would notice, but we do."

Naegi stopped, all his experiences still falling short. All that predictability and he still found himself lost. "What?"

"You did it again. I don't know how you knew, not totally sure I wanna know, but you did. This: everyone talking together, laughing, I really don't think it'd be possible without you, so why do you always feel like you need to leave?"

Naegi's mouth was stuck open, but not a sound escaped it. There wasn't a reason, he just always left. At first it was because he couldn't bear to see the faces of dead classmates or those that killed him themselves, then he was so focused on preventing deaths all the repeated chatter just began to grate on him as he looped the same bits over and over. But now this was something entirely new, so why?

"Please come back," Aoi entreated. "I know I'm the one standing here, but it was everyone who sent me. We want you to be there with us." She held out a hand. "Please?"

It was a gamble. There was no guarantee this loop would be the last, and getting attached to everyone would... no. He could pretend everything he was doing, every death taking him a step closer to success, was some kind of statement on the persistence of hope and that it would save the world, but he wasn't doing it for the world; he was doing it for them.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Let's go back."

Naegi didn't remember the school, all the friendships he'd made, memories they'd formed together, but sitting there laughing as Kuwata teased Fukawa good-naturedly, as Aoi sat with Sakura, still very much alive, and even as Ikusaba sat near the back watching the scene with something akin to incomprehension, Naegi couldn't help but think to himself: if this wasn't what school was like, before the end of the world, maybe it was just as good. No.

Maybe it was even better.


End file.
